It’s a long hard journey to the top. But you don’t have to make it alone.
photo credit: Leszek.Leszczynski
As a community of age group athletes, Endurance Nation has a unique problem to solve. What athletes are searching for endurance excellence, but this needs to be tempered with existing commitments to family, work and beyond.
The mythology of endurance sports is full of examples of men and women who have sacrificed everything in pursuit of their athletic goals.
But let’s not mistake fanaticism for an actual methodology.
Without a doubt there Is a survivorship bias at the most extreme ends of your sport of choice.
We only hear about the athletes who have been able to survive the gauntlet of training, work, fatigue, stress is accompany extreme aspirations. The rest are just faceless shadows walking the same path.
We translate your epic ambitions into reality.
As athletes with endurance goals just like you, we understand the challenge associated with fulfilling your requirements by day and crushing your physical limits by night.
Sounds funny, right? But honestly the superhero lifestyle is an apt analogy on many levels:
- You are much more than just your strengths.
- You have powers, but you must use them wisely.
- You get praise and recognition for your routine actions, but you aren’t satisfied until you’ve met your own standards.
- You have identified a mortal enemy out there that you battle, but the truth is conquering yourself is the true fight.
And thanks to Endurance Nation, I would add one more:
- You can join a group of superheroes to combine strengths and support one another on your journey.
Our annual journey to making your epic endurance journey a reality starts in the OutSeason.
Our primary level for this process runs counter to traditional endurance coaching, but is backed by the performances of thousands of athletes who have worked with us since 2007.
Fast Before Far
We define fitness as your body’s ability to do work. Your fitness target is framed by the races you choose and your goals for those races. For 99% of us, finishing a marathon is fundamentally different than trying to qualify for Boston at a marathon.
We define work as Frequency x Duration x Intensity.
How often, how long, and how hard are you doing this activity? The type of performance you are striving for can be quantified in units of work, and we use these targets as benchmarks for your training across a season.
OutSeason Work = Frequency x Duration x Intensity
We target frequency and intensity in the OutSeason. Without the volume demands of your key races for the year, we have the chance to do — and recover from — more work than we could otherwise handle in a typical mid-year training block.
Frequency is a tool we use predominantly on the run to build durability first, and fitness second. It’s critical to build a strong and healthy run foundation that will support you across the entire year.
Intensity is our focus on choice on the bike — or in cases for runners only, in select sessions during the week — as we can do a great deal of work in a short period of time to get stronger.
Combined with large blocks of time for recovery, the fast before far approach enables you to build functional strength at both your Threshold and VO2 levels that you can carry into your season.
Getting Started on 11/02/2020
The first OutSeason group starts on November 2nd of 2020. This group is ideal for those of you training for a race in the first half of 2021…so anything in January to June.
We will use our season planning process to adjust the plan to fit your timeline, fitness and goals. And then we get to work.
Whether you are a triathlete, runner, ultra freak or cyclist…we’ve got the plans and the process to help you be your best!
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